


With a Hemlock Heart

by JayMor



Series: DC Mixtape [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: BAMF Tim Drake, Dick is Very Upset, M/M, Morally Grey Tim Drake, Murder Bunny Jason Todd, Murder Husbands, Oblivious Narrator Dick Grayson, Poison is Sexy, Romantic Jason Todd, Unless You’re the One Poisoned, he’s ‘wine’ing about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24245668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayMor/pseuds/JayMor
Summary: Dick is the first to admit he isn’t thebestbig brother out there, but he tries. So when Jason starts gifting Tim with bouquets of poisonous flowers? Yeah, Dick is a little concerned. Except when Dick finally figures out what’s going on? It’s sosomuch worse than he thought.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Series: DC Mixtape [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1388044
Comments: 33
Kudos: 500





	With a Hemlock Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BananasofThorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananasofThorns/gifts).



> Based of BananasofThorns glorious Dark!Tim AU that I adore, because really, casual poison? You bet that’s my jam.

In hindsight, Jason’s sudden and unprompted new friendship(?) with Poison Ivy should have been what Dick noticed first about his admittedly troubled and certainly fucked in the head pit-addled little brother. It was not. It also wasn’t his new patrol, which somehow covered his own old patrol and also just barely overlapped with Tim’s, which Dick, in hindsight, should have noticed second.

Instead it’s the oleander.

Brilliant pink, nearly magenta, sitting innocuous but impossible to ignore on Tim’s desk, directly beside his placard reading Tim Drake, CEO. Tim isn’t one for flowers. Dick knows this, because he’s had to live with the man. Hell, Tim isn’t one for plants, or really any living thing that doesn’t have enough capability for independent thought to be manipulated. So why are there flowers on Tim’s desk?

“Oh those?” Tim flips through the documents Dick has just delivered, a proposal that Bruce had coaxed out of one of the new interns that he thought held promise. He doesn’t bat an eye at Dick’s question. “Jason gave those to me.”

“Jason?” 

That’s unusual. And concerning. Sure Jason is a sensitive type deep down inside, but that is very deep down inside, far too deep for flowers. He reaches out to touch a hot pink petal.

Tim tsks. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Dick freezes, fingers a mere inch away from the tantalizingly pink petal. “Why not?”

“Poison, mostly,” Tim replies, not even looking up from his papers. “Oleander is one of the most toxic plants out there.”

Dick pulls his hand away from the bouquet as if he’s been burnt. He stares at Tim, jaw gaping, spluttering out, “What the—why would you even—why would Jason even give those to you?”

“Because I like them?” Tim shoots back, lips twisting up into a coy grin.

Dick shudders, painfully aware that his little brother is, for all intents and purposes, a conniving backstabbing snake, and lets the subject drop.

Except it doesn’t end there. Because Dick is clued in now, Dick is paying attention, and holy shit Jason gives Tim so many flowers. 

The sheer number of them is overwhelming, all different types and colors, half fat blooms spilling out of their vases, half single pristine stalks in half full glasses. They’re all beautiful, sometimes sweet smelling, other times nearly scentless, each one delicate in its own way yet somehow completely different from any flower that came before. There’s only one constant between them all that Dick has realized. 

They’re all toxic. 

Even the flowers that Dick has never seen before, that logically don’t exist, that don’t have samples already loaded into the computer in the bat cave (and oh, Dick wonders, is that why Jason is suddenly buddy-buddy with Poison Ivy?), every single one of them is toxic. 

And not just baby, get a rash, toxic either. Face-melting, skin-blisteringly, one touch a and you die toxic. In hindsight, the oleander was tame. 

Which raises the question, should Dick be concerned? Because Tim can handle himself, that’s for sure, even if it’s his murder happy duffle-bag full of heads predecesor he has to defend himself against. But still. Dick is the oldest, the responsible one. He should probably say something. 

The decision is taken out of his hands. By Damian. And oof, that probably could have gone better, literally would have gone better if it were any other bat. But it wasn’t.

Dick isn’t even there for most of it, hadn’t realized that Damian was having a big stop being a creepy manipulative pseudo-villain talk with Jason until he grapples into the abandoned warehouse on 8th And Wayne (and really Bruce, letting the city name a street after him in the Bowery?), after hearing Jason ask for backup through the comms. 

He bursts through the window in a shower of glass, less concerned with the property damage than he is with getting to his brother, because Jason never asks for help. For Jason to comm for help now means something must be seriously wrong, and Dick’s heart is in his throat with worry. Except when he glances around the warehouse, eyes lighting on his brother, Jason is fine, leaning up against a wall easy as you please, running his fingers over the barrel of his gun like he’s counting the scratches there.

Instead, Damian is trussed up like a pig and dangling from the ceiling, shouting obscenities in at least four different languages, for Jason to let me fucking down Todd I demand it you motherfucking imbecile. Dick lets slip a, “language little D,” without even thinking about it, resulting in a fresh bout of swearing, this time directed at him. 

Jason grins. “You got my comm?”

And Dick is mad, heart still thumping in his chest, adrenaline just barely starting to cool. “I thought you were in trouble asshole.”

“I was,” Jason shrugs, gesturing at Damian, “The little demon over there tried to murder me.”

“You are plotting something Todd,” Damian hisses back, still wriggling against the rope. “You and the interloper. I will protect my place.”

Jason scoffs, the half-laugh mechanical in his hood. “We ain’t planning shit, murder baby. If anything, I’m saving your skin right now.”

Damian sniffs something that sounds suspiciously like _I can take care of myself_. Dick raises an eyebrow, painfully aware that he doesn’t get paid enough (he doesn’t get paid at all) to deal with this shit. He turns to Jason. “So why _do_ you have little D dangling from the roof?”

“I told you,” Jason shoots back, “he tried to murder me. Plus, if I didn’t, he’d go to Tim, and baby bird would eat him alive.”

Baby bird? Dick hasn’t heard that one before. He looks at Jason for a few seconds longer, before deciding he won’t get any more information there, and rounds on Damian. “Why’s Jay saying you tried to murder him little D?”

Damian flushes, dropping his head down, facing the wall away from Dick. He mumbles something, too quiet for Dick to hear anything aside from _flowers_ and _suspicious._

_“_ You gotta talk louder little D,” Dick reminds, and _Christ_ , since when was he the once in charge of Damian’s social skills, “No one can hear you when you mumble.”

Damian makes a sound like he’s choking before he spits out, “The flowers were suspicious.”

“The flowers?” And suddenly Dick is remembering hundreds of toxic blooms, spilling over Tim’s desk, each one more dangerous than the last, each one from _Jason_ , and he groans. “Lemme cut you down lil D,” he says, cutting the ropes with the wing of a batarang. Damian is out of the warehouse seconds later, hissing a bitter _this isn’t over Todd_ to Jason as he beats a hasty retreat. 

Dick looks at his brother, expression flat. “He has a point you know.” Jason looks back with false innocence and Dick scowls at him. “Why are you giving Tim flowers? Especially deadly flowers. Are you trying to kill him?”

Jason cackles, the sound as jarring as it is unexpected. “Fuck no,” he snorts out. “I’d be dead before I tried. Nah,” he says, waving his hand as if to brush the concern away, “I’m wooing him.”

Dick chokes.

The flowers stop unexpectedly, two days after the warehouse. Dick is relieved, expect for the part where he’s not, because there’s only _two_ reasons why the flowers would stop. One, Tim was successfully wooed, and now he and Jason are in a relationship made of the stuff in Dick’s nightmares. Two, Tim rejected Jason, and there was going to be another duffel bag full of heads soon. Dick isn’t sure which he hopes is true. 

Except Tim doesn’t seem to talk to Jason any more than he used to. And Jason is fine, for Jason anyway, and there’s no spike in decapitations. So maybe there’s a third option, and Jason gave up?

As the weeks pass, and nothing continues to happen, Dick starts to believe option three. 

But then there’s a gala. 

Who is Dick kidding, there’s always a gala. It part of the price of being a Wayne, along with the paparazzi that dog him during the day and the twenty-eight different suits in his closet. 

But anyway, gala. It’s one of the charity ones, and he, Tim, and Cass are the three on the schedule to go. It’s boring, like they usually are, and Dick is about ready to scream the next time some older wealthy woman swings by to pinch his ass and heavily allude to a _bit of fun_. 

And then Jason busts through the door. 

He’s got a cocksure grin on his face, and he’s wearing a wine red suit that somehow manages to make him look debonair instead of debauched, even with the messy hair and two bottles of wine clenched in his hands. His eyes light on Dick with a manic kind of excitement. He cuts through the crowd, somehow transferring both bottles into one hand to clap Dick on the back.

“Yoooooo,” he slurs, cheeks red even though Dick could _swear_ Jason is as sober as a judge, “Dickie, Dick Man, Richard my brother, where is Timmy?”

Panic crashes through Dick like ice water. “Why do you need Tim?” He asks, desperately hoping that Jason isn’t in the middle of _his_ special version of drunk texting an ex. 

Jason grins, his eyes glinting sharp for a half second before blurring over again. “I pr’mised Timmy I’d bring him some wine.” He holds up the bottles, inordinately proud. “Look, wine.”

Dick nods along, simultaneously believing him and also horrified. “I think Tim’s upstairs, I can show you?”

Jason throws his arm around his shoulders, movements just barely too graceful to be truly drunk. “That’d be great.”

On the bright side, Tim _is_ upstairs. On the less bright side, he’s upstairs with one of the guests, a Johnson Mahoney who Dick _knows_ is involved in child prostitution and drug trafficking. Johnson Mahoney is zip tied to a chair looking distinctly red in the face, while Tim all but _lounges_ on a couch next to him, flipping absently through what looks like case files. 

Jason is remarkably less concerned about this turn of events than Dick is. He prances up to Tim, entirely dropping the drunk facade. “I brought what you asked for baby bird,” he chirps, “along with a little something extra, for us.” He grins, holding up the wine bottles. 

Tim gives a close-lipped smile back. “Would you pour our guest a drink Jay?”

Jason nods, handing off one of the bottles to Tim before finding a wine glass and filling it half full with the wine still in his hands. This he makes like he’s going to hand it to Mahoney, before letting out a mocking _ah my bad looks like your hands are a little tied up there_ and turning back to Tim. “You want me to give it to him?” He asks.

Tim nods.

Jason’s grin twists into something Dick can only describe as sharkish, before he grabs the man’s face and pours the wine down his throat. Mahoney chokes and splutters, but Jason doesn’t stop. When the glass is empty Jason tsks, says “ah, but you spilled all over yourself. What a waste. Let me get you a little more to drink,” before grabbing the rest of the bottle and jamming it down his throat. 

Dick gapes, barely noticing when Tim hands him his own glass of wine, poured from the bottle Jason had handed off. 

There’s a choking noise, that Dick vaguely recognizes is coming from him, but then he stops and the choking doesn’t, at which point Dick realizes that Mahoney is choking too. And turning purple. And seizing. 

“What did you do to him?” Dick gasps, watching the man start to convulse in front of him. 

“I’ve gotten into wine recently,” Tim replies. “Mr. Mahoney just sampled my newest batch, a nice dry red with hints of oleander and aconite. A bit harsh for the casual drinker, but more than appropriate for someone involved in Mr. Mahoney’s circles.”

Dick drops the wineglass in his hand, watching the red splatter across the wood floor. “You killed him?” He asks. He looks down at the wine now on the floor, “We’re you going to—“

Tim holds up a finger. “Before you accuse me of trying to murder you, this is a different wine. Also a red, but with hints of cherry and and chocolate. Completely non-toxic. And yes, Mr. Mahoney is dead. However, we did not kill him. His unfortunate drinking habit did that, as he unfortunately had one glass too many before deciding to drive home. The crash was _truly_ unfortunate. _Understand?_ ”

Dick nods, too afraid of the cold steel in Tim’s gaze to say anything else. 

“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Tim murmurs, not a shred of regret in his voice. “I know you’re a more traditional bat, but well, Jason did bring you, and I try to indulge him.”

Dick chokes for an entirely different reason this time, eyes glazing over as Jason sidles up behind Tim to run his hands up his sides. 

“You guys were—are—the flowers?” Dick stutters out.

Tim raises an eyebrow, but Jason laughs. “Holy hell Dickie,” he snorts. “You can’t be _that_ dense. Baby bird and I have been dating for months now.”

Dick whines. 


End file.
